Woman who serves poor gets recognition

Mumbai: With a master's degree in clinical psychology, Nileema Mishra, 39, of Bahadarpur, Maharashtra, could have easily opted for a comfortable job in the city when she finished her education in 1995.

Instead, she chose to serve rural India's poverty-stricken women, motivating thousands to be trained in productive jobs and earn an income as well as their dignity.

Her work has not gone unrecognised as she becomes yet another Indian to receive the prestigious 2011 Ramon Magsaysay Award, considered the Asian version of the Nobel Prize. Along with Mishra, Harish Hande, 44, who put solar power technology in the hands of the poor, are two Indians among six chosen for this award for Emergent Leadership, given to people who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity.  

New-found confidence

Today, her organisation — Bhagini Nivedita Gramin Vigyan Niketan (BNGVN) or the Sister Nivedita Rural Science Centre, named after an Anglo-Irish missionary who devoted her life to helping poor Indian women — has formed 1,800 self-help groups in 200 villages across Maharashtra.

The organisation's microcredit programme has distributed the equivalent of $5 million (Dh18.3 million) to village women with a 100 per cent recovery rate. The most critical change that has taken place is in the villagers' sense of themselves, their new-found confidence that they need not despair and that working together they will find a way.

Even at the young age of 13, Mishra told her friends that she had made up her mind not to marry so that she could devote her whole life to helping the poor.

Five years after she finished her studies in 1995, she returned to her village to set up her organisation. There was no model in mind but she believed people should identify their own problems and find solutions.

"Don't despair, we shall find a way," she told them.

BNGVN brought changes by training women in production, marketing, accounting and computer literacy.

Inspired by Mishra, the women went on to build a warehouse so they could procure supplies in bulk at better prices and formed an association that now has outlets for its products in four districts of the state.

She says proudly: "These village women who are traditionally confined to the home have now become productive, articulate and confident in their ability to think for themselves."